LavenderBee

Beekeeping is in Russell Gibbs’ blood, but it wasn’t until last year that he picked up the practice his grandfather learned in the 1940s.

During spring 2011 Gibbs, 33, built a pair of white wooden hives, bought his first two colonies and established them on a friend’s farm in Canfield, 40 minutes from his Dundas home. It was supposed to be a hobby, a way to find a deeper connection to both his family and nature (at the time, he was commuting to Toronto for his job as Creative Director at Parcel Design), but it turned into a bit of business venture this summer.

It’s not quite as large-scale as the commercial operation his uncles run in Dalkeith, Ont. (they have 1,200 colonies of 40,000 to 60,000 bees each), but Gibbs increased his colonies from two to seven this past spring. He has some spare time to take care of them since quitting his job at Parcel to start his own graphic design business last summer and the bees have been thriving.

It usually takes a full season for a colony to get used to its surroundings, but Gibbs says 2012 was a good year for his, owing in part to the mild winter and early spring weather.

“What lucked out for me is I didn’t push the bees last year,” he says. “Sometimes beekeepers will get focused on getting the product the first year but I just let them build for themselves and because we had an early spring and an early summer and it was so hot out of the gate, the two colonies from last year were just producing like nuts.”

In August he extracted and jarred 120 pounds of honey, made primarily from the clover and wildflowers that were in bloom at the time. A June harvest was comprised mostly of early spring and summer blossoms, offering a rich, dark nectar. In late August he extracted most of the honey before the real goldenrod boom, but there’s still a bit mixed in. Gibbs says the plant’s floral flavour combined with that of earlier summer clover gives his latest batch of honey great flavour.

Thinking ahead, Gibbs has considered adding more colonies, but he says this year kept him busy enough and once his newer bees have adjusted to the area, they’ll produce even more. On top of that, he’s started working with a Grade 7/8 class at the Dundas Valley Montessori School — teaching them the ins and outs of being an apiarist. It’s a lot to deal with, especially when he factors in his design work.

“The thing I sort of realized with this is you can’t put Mother Nature off,” says Gibbs. “You can stagger and plan your schedule with design work but with beekeeping you can’t. If you neglect visiting and taking care of the bees, something can happen.”

Gibbs has been fortunate. He hasn’t had to deal with varroa mites (a parasite that can cause colony collapse) and he only had a minor brush with the insecticide neonicotinoid (similarly linked to collapse). It’s partly because of how hyperaware he is of the potential problems. He thinks of his bees like pets and is fascinated by their minisocieties.

“You think they’re simple bugs that collect nectar and store it,” he says. “But they have these complex lives.” While it’s true that some start out as worker bees, collecting nectar, they accept different jobs as they grow to full maturity (40 days). Some take care of other bees. Some clean the hive. Others, called undertakers, pick up dying bees and fly them away to die outside of the hive.

Gibbs also loves the way beekeeping balances his day job. The time he spends tending to his hives is a complete 180 degree turn from graphic design, but there are aspects of it that are complementary. He did all the design for his website ( www.gibbshoney.com), logo, merchandise and marketing. He’s the one who mans a table Fridays at the Centro Market in downtown Burlington when he has a harvest. And he does all the shipping for online orders that come in from Toronto, Hamilton, Kitchener and even Seattle.

“That’s the thing that’s sort of neat about the way this is working. Sort of every step of it has been a new thing for me,” he says. “It’s not necessarily an easy thing to do but it’s really rewarding.”